Wednesday, 22 January 2014

I bought this book last week with my Christmas book voucher, along with a couple more that I'll be reading shortly. It seems to have stretched further than I expected because all of these books were on special offer, and I had some points collected and I had one of those Waterstones loyalty stamp cards which also gave me another tenner. Score.

The reason I bought this is that it won the Costa prize last week, and so I decided to jump on the bandwagon. I very nearly bought this from a bookshop in London when I saw it available in hardback over the summer. The cover alone was lovely enough that I thought I might like to read it, but I already had an armful of books and I could ill afford to carry another hardback home with me with the wonderful burden I already had. I still like the paperback cover I suppose, but it's not as majestic as the hardback cover, and the effect is a little spoiled with the big Costa prize sticker on the front.

I also wanted to read this after the grand claim from the judges that it's "so good as to make you a better person", or something similar. So naturally I had to get involved.

This story is told from the perspective of Matt following the accidental death of his older brother as he grows up. He struggles to come to terms with the loss of his brother, as do his parents, and he gradually becomes more and more unwell with schizophrenia. He gets pulled out of primary school and is kept at home with his depressed mother, and later when he returns to school he ends up dropping out of school and moving in with a friend and living in squalor. He then starts to get obsessed with atoms and the idea that memories are made of atoms, so if he outs together the right combination of atoms then he can bring back his brother. Really interesting idea. He eventually ends up in hospital and then runs away and then comes back again etc. I guess the idea is that his disjointed thinking is reflected in the telling of the story, which works really well. This is also achieved through the different mediums used, such as the letters, Matthew's own thoughts, his stories written on the computer and the typewriter.

Overall I really liked this, very touching in places like when you can see the sadness in Matthew's mother, and then thoughtful and funny in others, and a little dark and raw in others. Really enjoyable, and I would read more.

I also liked the sections the end of this book which has a little Q&A with the author, which I really liked. He comes across as really humble and likeable, and it was interested to learn that he is trained as a mental health nurse which gives some context to the subjects covered in the novel.

Saturday, 18 January 2014

This is one of the book I received from Luke for Christmas. I guess from friends and family I asked for books that I wanted but that I wouldn't necessarily buy for myself, and this is a perfect example of this. A gorgeous little hardback, wonderfully illustrated, silver accents on the cover and the pages, and I also somehow got given a signed copy, which was an additional delight that I hadn't noticed until I opened it up to read earlier today. Yay!

I don't have a great deal to say about this as it was very short. It's basically a little fairy tale about a postman who falls in love with a raven, who then have a daughter who is the raven girl. She longs to be able to fly and finds a doctor who is willing to transform her so she can fulfil her dreams of being a real raven.

Short and sweet, and a lovely book. This is the kind of book that I don't think you could ever really enjoy in the same way on an electronic device as on paper.

I downloaded this book onto my iPad very recently as I knew that I wanted to read it as soon as it came out. There's been loads of hype about this book and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

Lizzie Prain has killed her husband Jacob, and not wanting to go to prison decides to dispose of his body by eating him piece by piece. All the while we are given glimpses into their relationship and Lizzie's plans for her new life.

Sadly I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I am partly going to attribute this to the fact that I read this on my iPad, with a headache and just as I have started wearing new glasses, which has made reading the text a little annoying. However there was plenty about he book itself that also irritated me. I didn't like or really empathise with Lizzie at all, and I didn't really understand why she killed her husband, so maybe I missed something? I didn't like the way the present tense narrative was mixed with bits of the past. I didn't really like the numbered 'list' format of her thoughts and feelings while cutting up and cooking her husband's remains, although I understand why it was there and presented that way. I guess I was hoping that this would be a little bit more like a mixture of Tampa (which has a disturbing theme and yet a narrator who I really enjoyed reading and empathised with, to a certain extent) and Like Water for Chocolate (which incorporates human emotions and relationships with cooking with a pinch of magic realism).

I really wanted to like this but I feel like I maybe didn't 'get' it. I've read a couple of other reviews where people talked about the humour of the book, whereas I didn't get that at all while I was reading it.

I'm not disappointed in the book, it was really well written, and it made me squirm in places when Lizzie describes eating the various parts of her husband, which was sort of enjoyable. I was more disappointed that I didn't like it. Even though everything pointed towards me loving this book, I don't think it was for me, for some reason.

Wednesday, 15 January 2014

This is another book that I bought recently with a gift voucher from Christmas. I remember seeing it often on the shelves of Waterstones when I worked there and being kind of intrigued by the cover however I never ended up picking it up to read the blurb or the first few pages. I recently came across something online which mentioned it and I downloaded a sample onto my iPad, read it, bought the book and the rest is history.

This book is set in an alternate world where there are people who live in the sea as well as those who live on land, and they are split into landsmen and deepsmen. Angelica comes out of the ocean and marries a landsmen, becoming queen, in exchange for the protection of the deepsmen along their shores. Then, for the next generations, the countries of the world are ruled by the descendants of this deepsman queen. Generations later, a bastard washes up on the shores of England to be raised in secret with the hope that he will overthrow the throne, and in the royal household, the youngest princess is raised under very different circumstances.

I really enjoyed the first parts of this, getting to know Henry (the bastard) and Anne (the princess). The story opens with Henry being cast out of the sea by his mother to be rescued by Allard who takes care of him. Having never been out of the sea, Henry cannot walk or talk, has never eaten food other than crabs and fish, has never worn clothes, has never been in a building. I really loved seeing the world through his perspective as he starts to get to know the world of the landsmen. Anne's world is similarly confusing - her father who is to be King, dies in battle and she rarely sees her stern mother, and is not told that she has a sister who is potentially in line to the throne. S life is very confusing for both of them as they grow up. And then there is the world of the deepsmen, who the hybrid royals also have links with. They periodically go into the eaters to commune with them, and they send their dead to burial at sea, where they are eaten by the deepsmen.

Eventually this turns into a sort of political plot as Henry has been groomed forcefully take the throne, so this part of the story unfolds, which I didn't find as interesting. I think this was partly because it strayed a little too much into a historical/ political story about kings and queens, which doesn't really interest me as much. Moreover, whilst I really enjoyed seeing Henry and Anne grow up, once they became teenagers I found them kind of dull. Henry's stubbornness and dislike of the culture of the landsmen became a little repetitive, as did Anne's praying and crying and yearning for her mother. I definitely liked Anne better, but I didn't really care too much about Henry by the time the end of the book came around. But I really enjoyed the world it was set in, and I loved the descriptions of the deepsmen and their language, their culture, their movements etc. which were all really interesting ideas.

Monday, 13 January 2014

I actually received this book for Christmas 2012 however during one of my stays at home over Christmas I dug this out because I realised that I hadn't read any of it!

This is an anthology of short stories, all with the theme of the end of the world / apocalypse, which I adore. Also very apt to read during the first couple of weeks of 2014 - start as you mean to go on and all that jazz.

There are stories in here from authors I recognise, such as Stephen King (whose name I think I recognised on the cover which then prompted me to ask for this collection as a gift), Orson Scott Card and George R.R. Martin, however there were even more authors whose names I didn't recognise, so this was a really nice opportunity to read some works from new people. It was also a great chance to read some genres that I'm not used to reading. Although I love sci-fi on film and television (albeit I am a fairly casual consumer) I don't really read much of it. I want to call it 'pure' sci-fi, and what I mean by that is that it contains worlds or characters that aren't recognisable to me, that they have deliberately futuristic technology or biology or something like that. I can find that I'm a bit out off by some of this fiction as I find that some of it focuses too heavily on the creation of the worlds rather than the story or the characters, and I also find myself really annoyed by overly-odd names for people or places as it trips up the rhythm of my reading, which isn't as pleasurable. However I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed some of the more hardcore sci-fi and I'll definitely read more in future. Some of my favourite stories are below:

The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King - this is the only story in the collection that I've read before, so I knew I was going to enjoy it again. Great story, and one where I think the use of 'dialect' actually enhances it.

The People of Sand and Slag by Paulo Bacigalupi - this story is set in a wasteland where humans have evolved almost beyond recognition, and a group of them come across a dog. Really weird but brilliant and I've been thinking about it for days since reading it.

How We Got In Town and Out Again by Jonathan Lethem - revolves quite heavily around virtual reality, and with this one I really liked that the narrator keeps going back to visit a lonely snowman character. I just found it really endearing.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow - I work with lots of IT departments for different companies, and there are also some people I work with who fit this very meticulous sysadmin personality, so I really enjoyed it from this perspective. I also really liked the idea of people prioritising saving the internet above all other infrastructure, partly because it's important but also it's the only thing that makes sense to them.

Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler - In this world a sort of plague has occurred which prevents people from communicating via speech or writing. Really interesting and haunting story.

There were loads of great stories in this collection, which makes me think I should probably read more sci-fi and fantasy, as I'm bound to find some post-apocalyptic and dystopian gems in there. Why haven't I read more of this in the past? Silly me.

I actually received this book for Christmas 2012 however during one of my stays at home over Christmas I dug this out because I realised that I hadn't read any of it!

This is an anthology of short stories, all with the theme of the end of the world / apocalypse, which I adore. Also very apt to read during the first couple of weeks of 2014 - start as you mean to go on and all that jazz.

There are stories in here from authors I recognise, such as Stephen King (whose name I think I recognised on the cover which then prompted me to ask for this collection as a gift), Orson Scott Card and George R.R. Martin, however there were even more authors whose names I didn't recognise, so this was a really nice opportunity to read some works from new people. It was also a great chance to read some genres that I'm not used to reading. Although I love sci-fi on film and television (albeit I am a fairly casual consumer) I don't really read much of it. I want to call it 'pure' sci-fi, and what I mean by that is that it contains worlds or characters that aren't recognisable to me, that they have deliberately futuristic technology or biology or something like that. I can find that I'm a bit out off by some of this fiction as I find that some of it focuses too heavily on the creation of the worlds rather than the story or the characters, and I also find myself really annoyed by overly-odd names for people or places as it trips up the rhythm of my reading, which isn't as pleasurable. However I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed some of the more hardcore sci-fi and I'll definitely read more in future. Some of my favourite stories are below:

The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King - this is the only story in the collection that I've read before, so I knew I was going to enjoy it again. Great story, and one where I think the use of 'dialect' actually enhances it.

The People of Sand and Slag by Paulo Bacigalupi - this story is set in a wasteland where humans have evolved almost beyond recognition, and a group of them come across a dog. Really weird but brilliant and I've been thinking about it for days since reading it.

How We Got In Town and Out Again by Jonathan Lethem - revolves quite heavily around virtual reality, and with this one I really liked that the narrator keeps going back to visit a lonely snowman character. I just found it really endearing.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow - I work with lots of IT departments for different companies, and there are also some people I work with who fit this very meticulous sysadmin personality, so I really enjoyed it from this perspective. I also really liked the idea of people prioritising saving the internet above all other infrastructure, partly because it's important but also it's the only thing that makes sense to them.

Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler - In this world a sort of plague has occurred which prevents people from communicating via speech or writing. Really interesting and haunting story.

There were loads of great stories in this collection, which makes me think I should probably read more sci-fi and fantasy, as I'm bound to find some post-apocalyptic and dystopian gems in there. Why haven't I read more of this in the past? Silly me.

Saturday, 11 January 2014

I bought this on a whim with a gift card from Christmas as I heard they were making a film out of this this year. I've also read a couple of Nick Hornby's book in the past and enjoyed them. I've read High Fidelity and also seen the film, and I guess I enjoyed them both but I have mixed feelings about it because I really think Rob is a scumbag. I also found that I had complicated feelings about the characters in A Long Way Down in that I didn't really like any of them, but unfortunately I also wasn't really rooting for any of them. Of the four main characters, I guess I liked Martin the best as I found him quite funny.

The story starts out on New Year's Eve with Martin heading to the roof of a tower block intending to throw himself off the top. He has pretty much ruined his own life; a disgraced ex-television show host who has recently spent time in prison for sleeping with an underage girl. Quite the mess. As he is preparing to throw himself off, the story shifts to Maureen's perspective, as she too is making plans to end her own life due to the struggles of caring for her severely disabled son. This story keeps shifting perspective from one character to another, and soon two more characters (Jess and JJ) join them on the rooftop, also having planned to kill themselves. The four strangers end up coming to an agreement hat they won't kill themselves until valentines day a few weeks away and that they will meet up regularly in the meantime to see if they still feel like it. They end up going on all sorts of hijinks, including going on holiday, pretending that they've had a religious experience and going on a talk show.

This book was okay, I didn't love it, and I think it was the fact that nine of the voices really spoke to me. I would have liked to have one person to really get behind, but I didn't really care too much about any of them unfortunately.

I'm reading a lot of different book blogs at the moment and everyone seems to be putting out some thoughts on their favourite reads of 2013, or best books, or something along those lines, so I'm jumping in on the action since the year has drawn to a close. I was reflecting on all the posts I made in 2013 and making a list on my phone of some of the books I wanted to mention, and I thought to myself, 'I'll keep it to around ten books or so, that should be a nice round number. After all, I only read 52 books last year.'

For my top books of the year, I have 20 out of 52.

So I guess I'll start out this way - I really enjoyed a lot of the books I read last year, and that warms my cockles because I'm all about the enjoyment. However for the purposes of this post I would like to single out the books that really obsessed me this year. I recently came across from Nora Ephron which I think sums up the way I feel about reading books like this perfectly:

“There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.”

Here are the books which rapture-ised me this year:

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - I absolutely loved this memoir and everyone who I've passed it onto has also really enjoyed reading it. I just loved it. There's a film out later this year, so hopefully they do a good job with it.

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill - this book of short stories blew my mind. I read the majority of it on a car journey to France with my family. Normally I get terribly car sick and can't read at all in the car, so it's a testament to how good these stories are that I just couldn't stop myself reading them.

Tampa by Alissa Nutting - this book kind of crept up on me, and I didn't realise just how addictive it was going to be, until I started reading it and then couldn't tear my eyes away. Much like 29th Century Ghosts, I had to sacrifice some sleep to get deeper into this book. Totally worth it.

Joyland by Stephen King - I really enjoyed this book for the story and the characters and all the usual reasons, however I also find myself looking back at this book with a particular fondness because of the circumstances under which I read it. It was perfect. I was in the gorgeous Cornish countryside, in pretty much total solitude with Luke. Totally at peace and the perfect circumstances under which to fully immerse myself and enjoy this book.

Honourable mentions go to: The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits; The Round House by Louise Erdrich; We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver; N0S-4R2 by Joe Hill; Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I loved all of these books but they didn't quite suck me in as much as the books above, for whatever reasons.

I'm feeling really excited about reading in 2014 - I've received some wonderful books for Christmas and my birthday, and there are some really great new books that I'm looking forward to getting my hands on, as well as some older books that I'd love to re-visit. So many books and so little time! If there was a job out there where I could become some sort of professional reader, I'd be set for life. I'd love to take a year off work and spend it caught up in my own rapture of the deep...

Wednesday, 8 January 2014

I downloaded this on a whim the other day whilst I was looking for Joe Hill's new short story Wolverton Station, which I don't think is available yet in the UK (sad face) so I downloaded this instead, which is a series of two comics about trucks inspired by Richard Matheson.

I don't have a great deal to say about this because they were both very short - the first comic, which was written by Joe Hill, was about a tribe of bikers who upset a truck driver who then tries to seek his revenge. The other story, by Stephen King, is about a travelling salesman who encounters a slightly mad trucker while on the road and how he deals with the confrontation.

Both of the stories had different artists with different styles, and I liked both. I'm a big fan of the short stories of both of the authors and I think the comic book form works really well for this.

I downloaded this onto my iPad and iPhone recently as I started using Twitter again (mainly for finding interesting things to read and to expand my horizons) and I read that Jennifer Egan had written a story which was published entirely through Tweets. This download gathered everything into one volume so it could be read all at once.

I wasn't sure what to make of this at first and I was a little worried I wouldn't enjoy the story, but I found that it really quickly sucked me in and I wanted more from the narrator, but I was only going to get these delightful little 140-character nuggets. From what I could gather, this is sort of sci-fi - the narrator is some kind of spy who is trying to gather information from a powerful man by posing as an unassuming 'beauty'. The story reads a little like a set of instructions so seems quite distant and disjointed at times, but the coldness of the instructions makes some of the more brutal aspects sharper. The narrator appears to have a series of high-tech gadgets built into her physical body, such as a camera which can be triggered by pinching her ear, or a distress beacon which she can activate by tickling the back of her knee. It soon unfolds that her body itself is a black box for all the information she is gathering.

We never find out much more about the narrator other than that she has a husband somewhere waiting for her, and that she is acting to protect the USA. She encounters some danger, but ultimately seems to survive the encounters, although she will be forever changed.

I really liked this - it was the perfect length to devour in one sitting and I really liked the atmosphere of the story. I have several other Jennifer Egan books which I'm looking forward to reading in future.

Monday, 6 January 2014

This is one of the books I received for my Christmas and birthday bonanza this year (that is what it shall be known as from here onwards, as is mostly received lovely books). Its tagline is 'escape the rat race and start doing something you love' which is partly what attracted me as I'm open to new ideas on what to do with the rest of my life.

The book is made up of cartoons written and illustrated by Hugh himself, as well as advice and thoughts on a variety of topics to do with finding what you want to do in life. These points are usually illustrated by some personal anecdote or a story from a friend or business mentor of Hugh's. I found this really easy to dip into and read, as all of the snippets were fairly short and digestible, and I guess it was pretty much what I expected. It was a little unusual in that it seems to be categorised as a 'business' book, however doesn't really have a business-y feel to it.

One of the parts that really shook me up was quite early on in the book when he is talking about forming your so-called 'evil plan', which is named for the fact that others will potentially see it as evil because you will be defying the status quo:

"...you're supposed to clock in every morning after a lousy commute, just like the rest of us. You're supposed to hate your job, just like the rest of us. You're supposed to be stressed out and beholden to the system, just like the rest of us."

I think some of that comes on a little strong for me - I wouldn't say I 'hate' my job, although there are parts which wear me down and I definitely take more of it home than I should (metaphorically speaking). I don't have a particularly bad commute each morning, unlike if I were to transfer to a more powerful position in, say, London. I do, however, feel beholden to the system and stressed out. I feel like I have to continue working at my job and doing well, not because I like it or because it touches a particular passion of mine, but because it 'looks good'. It looks great on my CV, it's great experience and I'm learning loads, but sometimes I think, what for? It's not my company, and although I'm proud of the results I get and the work that my team does, it's fairly shallow in comparison to the satisfaction I imagine I could get from working for myself. At the end of the day, the results I get in my job are just another thing for me to try and 'achieve' or 'win', and they don't touch me in any particular way, other than the feeling that I have proved myself 'useful' to the company, which makes me feel increasingly hollow.

So I'm beholden to a system in which I feel pressured to keep a good job, so my CV looks good and that I might have a hope of getting another good job in future, or of getting a good mortgage so I can buy a good house and ultimately buy into the whole rat race, which seems really unsatisfying. I'm not sure I'm making a whole lot of sense here, however is think that it was probably a good idea for this to by my first book of 2014 so that I can reflect on some possible changes to make for the year ahead, whether that's a change in lifestyle or career, or a change in attitude.